I Love You Just the Way You Are

The Wizard on our portal (www.RightFitToolkit.com) got another email from someone wanting to “confront my shortcomings” by taking a Role-Based Assessment and then “making strategic changes.”  Sweet, so why am I cringing?

I don’t know this guy personally so I’m just going to speak generally here.

YOU ARE FINE THE WAY YOU ARE.

Sorry for shouting.

You are probably in the wrong job.  You might even be in the wrong career.

There’s even a good chance that you are reporting to, at best, someone who is a misfit for their job or, at worst, is just a bully.

And, worst of all, if you want to eat, you probably don’t have much choice.  It’s the economy, dammit.

It’s affecting all of us, but I’m working on it.  Not the economy, just our product for people like you.

So if you’re really miserable in your job and you suspect it just doesn’t fit you, well, I’ve been there.

Many times. And I might be able to help you.

Write me – 25 words or less – why you need help and why you deserve it.

Right Size, Right Fit

If people are what make business work, why are they getting laid off while companies fail to cut back on other, presumably less important things?

As CEO, should you keep the corporate jet, continue to fly first class or bite the bullet and go coach?

What is the sound of one stock dropping?

Ah, modern day koans.  There is no one right answer.

But apparently there is a “right size” for organizations, determined more, it seems, by the state of the economy than their – and their customers’ – needs.

I would venture that “right size” is not a very useful concept until you marry it to “right fit”.

One team of “right fit” people can do the work of an army of those who would rather be someplace else, even though they have the skills, abilities and resumes that get them hired.

What does a right fit team look like?

Come visit us.

Quality v Time – is there a question here?

According to a recent Aberdeen report, quality of hire is the top metric for 63% of non-HR execs while only 49% of HR execs agree. The HR execs rate time to fill at the top of their list while a mere 17% of non-HR execs care about it.

Add to that, Aberdeen’s survey of 400 organizations worldwide which found that the ones that equate competency with behavior are 35% more likely to improve revenue per employee than those that equate it with knowledge or skill. Is there any question that hiring for the right fit – the right behaviors – is the only metric that really counts?

Our CTO said to me years ago, “you can have it cheap, fast or good – pick two.” Good was my top choice. I knew I didn’t have a prayer of getting fast (is anything you want ever fast enough?), though if I wasn’t too cheap I could outbid the competitor for time and attention and probably get things a little faster. So I went for the only kind of competency that counts in the end: delivering high quality when it’s ready. Best of all, it wasn’t only a good bottom line decision, it was a good lesson for me in the virtue of patience!